This story holds a personal best for least amount of time to compose: I wrote it within twenty-four hours of seeing the movie. Yes, I know it's not the world's best movie (though it's better than The Postman -- but then, so's just about anything....), but I had a good time at it -- from the moment the ice caps on the Universal logo melted, and its seas covered its land. I liked the culture, and I loved the trimaran. The one thing that puzzled me was why the Mariner, who theoretically doesn't get much nookie, is so picky about what gets offered (though maybe he's as unimpressed by her intelligence as I am). "You don't want it," he says, and that's just the end of that, until she makes it clear she does want it. I couldn't leave that idea alone, so I found a backstory for it.

I also wanted to play with the Mariner's point of view: "laconic" is probably an understatement here. He doesn't seem a man who thinks or lives in long sentences with a lot of adjectives; it was fun to pare down my prose.

Anyway, I like the story. It was the first I'd written for a long time, and I think it still holds up.

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